Preserve CIA prisons as evidence, lawyers for 9/11 suspects ask

Lawyers for five alleged 9/11 conspirators who claim they were tortured in secret CIA prisons have asked a U.S. military judge to order that the prisons be preserved as evidence.

The issue is one of more than two dozen on the docket for a week of pretrial hearings set to begin on Monday in the war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.

The defendants include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the hijacked plane attacks that killed 2,976 people on September 11, 2001, and four other prisoners accused of training and aiding the hijackers.

Defense lawyers also asked the judge to order the U.S. government to turn over all White House or Justice Department documents authorizing the CIA to move suspected al Qaeda captives across borders without judicial review and to hold and interrogate them in secret prisons after the September 11 attacks.